Portrait
by oselle
Summary: Sam's first impression of Frodo, and some things that happened afterwards. COMPLETED
1. Something from Buckland

_Author's Note: This story was written several months before my SickFrodo fic, "The Bedside Reflections of Bell Gamgee." There is a scene in that story that was based upon what happens in this story, so I thought that "Portrait" would be a nice companion piece to "Bell Gamgee." And no, I'm not shamelessly plugging my own fics! I'm just uptight enough to think it's nice, as a fanfic writer, to have my own "canon," in which events are in concordance from story to story! ;)  
  
A brief word on the inspiration for this story…feel free not to read. In September, 2002, Meryl, my LoTR-loving friend, invited me to see a lecture given by Alan Lee here in New York City. Alan Lee, as you probably know, has been a renowned Tolkien illustrator for over 20 years, and was invited by Peter Jackson to be one of the conceptual designers of the movie trilogy. If you're familiar with his work, his distinctive style reflects on almost every scene of the films. During the lecture, Mr. Lee showed many slides of drawings from his own sketchbooks. One of these drawings was a pencil sketch of Elijah Wood's Frodo that was so beautiful, and so perfect in its simplicity, that both my friend and I caught our breath in awe. Mr. Lee told us that the sketch was meant to play a part in the movie…there was a planned scene of Bilbo taking a drawing of Frodo with him as he packed for Rivendell. The scene was never filmed (alas, because I think it would have been incredibly moving!) but the sketch remained in Mr. Lee's book. I could not get that drawing out of my head, and that weekend I started writing this story, "Portrait."  
  
In case you're dying to know what that drawing looked like, I'm very happy to tell you that it actually turned up in one of the appendices of the Special Edition DVD of Fellowship of the Ring. On "The Appendices: Part One" disk, go to "Designing and Building Middle-earth/Design Galleries/The Fellowship/Frodo." The drawing is on the title page, and is also the first slide visible. I was so delighted to see it on the DVD, because I had an impossible time trying to describe it, and of course, because it is much too lovely to languish unseen in Alan Lee's sketchbook!   
  
I debated whether to categorize this as a "Frodo" story or a "Sam" story, and I decided to go with Frodo, since this is really a tribute to Frodo, through Sam's eyes. __There is one direct quote in here, from "A Long-Expected Party," (FoTR) and a fair quote from "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit." (TTT).__  
  
I'll shut up now.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_  
  
Chapter 1: Something From Buckland  
  
Two days after Yule, Mr. Bilbo Baggins came home a day early from visiting his relations at Brandy Hall. It was a grey afternoon, and a light snow had just begun to fall, when Ham Gamgee looked out of his window and saw Bilbo approaching Bag End on his pony. He put on his hat and hurried up the hill.  
  
"Good afternoon, Mr. Bilbo, sir," he called. "Home early, I see."  
  
Bilbo dismounted from his pony and took some things out of his saddlebag. "Good day, to you too, Master Hamfast," he said cheerfully. "It looked like snow was on the way and I thought I'd make an early start before it got too thick." He looked up at the leaden sky. "I see I was right." He leaned forward and winked at Ham. "The relations were getting a bit thick, too, I might add."  
  
"You might, sir," said Ham with a laugh.  
  
 "Frodo was a bit disappointed, but he knows I'll be back soon enough."  
  
They went into the chilled front hall of Bag End and Bilbo put his packages down on the bench while Ham helped him out of his snow-dusted cloak. "And how is Mr. Frodo, sir? I haven't seen him since last summer."  
  
"Oh, he's grown like a weed since then. A fine lad. Looks more like his mother every day. I'm looking forward to having him here at Bag End when he turns twenty-one next year."  
  
"'Twill be interesting to have young folk around the place again, sir."  
  
"I hope it won't increase your duties much, Ham!"  
  
"Oh, being busy never bothers me none. And I'll have Sam to help out."  
  
Bilbo picked up his packages. "Do you know, that long ride in the snow has put me in the mood for a pint. I think I'll just put these things in my study and then head over to the Green Dragon."  
  
"I can take them for you, sir."  
  
"No, that's all right. I've got some puttering around I want to do back there first."  
  
"All right, sir. I'll stay here and get the fires lit. Wish I'd known you were coming home early, so you wouldn't have had to come back to such gloom."   
  
"Quite all right, Ham. I know you'll set things straight in no time," Bilbo said and headed down the hall to his study.   
  
Ham decided to go back down to Bagshot Row and fetch Sam. He could use Sam's help getting the hearths swept and warmed at Bag End and with starting the dinner preparations, and Sam always did enjoy coming up to Bag End. Ham stuck his head in the door of Bilbo's study to let him know he was leaving.  
  
He was quite startled to see Bilbo up on his knees on his cluttered desk. He appeared to be tacking something to the wall. One of the odd maps that he was always drawing, no doubt. Bilbo was terribly fond of odd maps.   
  
"Mr. Bilbo, sir? Anything I can help you with?"  
  
Bilbo looked over his shoulder and shook his head, speaking through the pins in his mouth. "No, no, not at all!"  
  
"I thought I'd go fetch Sam to help out, if you don't mind, sir."  
  
Bilbo shook his head and a smile crinkled his features. He waved one hand at Ham in a cheerful gesture of dismissal.   
  
"All right then, sir. See you in a little bit."  
  
"Mmmph!" said Bilbo, and returned to his project.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sam was so excited about accompanying his father to Bag End that he ran up the hill ahead of him, his breath puffing out in great frosty plumes on the cold air. He reached the green door first and turned around with his hand on the bright brass knob.  
  
"Come on, Dad!" he cried.  
  
His father came up the snow-covered walk, a bit out of breath from trying to keep up with Sam. "Now, I didn't ask you here to play, Samwise. There's work to be done."  
  
"I know, Dad, I know," Sam said. What his father didn't understand was that to Sam, working at Bag End was _like_ play. Where else could every turn around a corner possibly reveal some fascinating curiosity…a dwarvish shield, a treasure map, an elvish sword? Not to mention, old Mr. Bilbo with his endless stories and his wonderful way of telling them. It seemed that he never tired of sharing his tales with Sam, and Sam certainly never tired of hearing them.   
  
"The first thing I want you to do Sam," his father said when they were inside, "Is get the fires going in Mr. Bilbo's study and his room. There's some good twigs you can use for kindling out in the woodshed. Do the study first, because I know Mr. Bilbo will be back in there when he returns, and I want it to be nice and warm. All right, Sam?"  
  
"All right, Dad!"  
  
Sam went to the woodshed and gathered up an armful of dry twigs. He paused for a moment to look out at the view. Bag End commanded the best view of Hobbiton and the Shire, and Sam always loved to stand here on the hill and take in the sight. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and winter's early twilight was already beginning to descend. The fields all around Hobbiton lay quietly dusted in snow as the purple shadows of evening began to fall. He saw warm yellow light spilling from the kitchen window at #3 Bagshot Row, and smelled the woodsmoke that curled from the chimney. It was so quiet that Sam could hear his own heartbeat.   
  
Sam brought the twigs back to Bilbo's study, and paused in the doorway with a slight quiver of excitement. Bilbo's study was absolutely the best place in Bag End to find unusual things. Books were piled everywhere, and although Sam could not read a word, the mere sight and smell of all those books filled him with wonder. All sorts of curious things were up on the shelves and tacked to the walls. Bilbo had told tales about many of them, but just as many others remained mysterious, and Sam thought he liked it just fine that way.   
  
Sam knew that he had work to do, but he noticed that Bilbo's desk, always cluttered, was even more messy than usual. The desk was tucked into an alcove beneath the one round window, and while the rest of the room was already in shadow, the alcove and desk were still lit by pearly winter light. Some sort of leather satchel appeared to be opened on the desk, and papers were spread out every which way. Sam did not think it would hurt to take a quick look at the desk. He hoped that Bilbo had brought something exciting back from his visit to Buckland.  
  
He set the twigs down by the fireplace and tiptoed over to the desk, feeling vaguely guilty. This was "meddling," he knew, and "meddling" only led to trouble. Yet Bilbo was always so open about his things, and after all, _these_ things were all over his desk, in plain sight.   
  
Sam ruffled through the pages and felt a sinking disappointment. There were many papers here, but they were filled with nothing but words, mysterious letters that meant nothing to him. He wondered, not for the first time, if Bilbo would ever consider teaching him those letters, if he asked. He imagined that Bilbo would not mind at all, and might even enjoy it, but Sam thought his father might have something to say about it. _Don't go getting mixed up in the business of your betters, or you'll land in trouble too big for you_, his father always said, although Sam could not imagine what trouble could possibly come from Bilbo teaching him his letters.  
  
He turned from the desk with a sigh, ready to get back to his chores. As he turned, his eyes swept past the window, and up to the wall against the desk. Sam's breath caught in his throat, and for a minute, he stood staring, completely motionless. Then, he turned on his heel and ran from the room. He tore down the hall to the kitchen, where his father was standing at the sink, scrubbing potatoes.  
  
"Dad, Dad!" he cried, and tugged at his father's shirt.  
  
"Goodness, Samwise, what is it? I'm up to me elbows in 'taters."  
  
"But Dad, come and see! In Mr. Bilbo's study! It's an Elf, Dad!"  
  
Sam's father turned from the sink "Sam, there's no Elf in Mr. Bilbo's study or anywhere else in Bag End. What notions you have."  
  
"No, no Dad!" Sam said with impatience. "Not a _whole_ Elf…come and see!" He wrapped his small hand around his father's wrist and pulled him down the hall.   
  
Sam pointed to the wall just to the left of Bilbo's cluttered desk, at the sheet of paper that had been tacked up there. "See!" he said triumphantly. "That's an Elf! Mr. Bilbo must've drawn him!"  
  
Much to Sam's surprise, his father laughed out loud. "That's no Elf, son. That's just Mr. Bilbo's young cousin, Frodo, who lives at Brandy Hall. He's a bit different-looking, it's true, but he's just as plain a hobbit as you or me."  
  
"_That's_ Frodo?" Sam asked in disbelief. Sam knew Frodo's name well, for Bilbo spoke of him often, and with great fondness. Yet Sam had never met him. Frodo had spent two weeks at Bag End the summer past, but Sam had been down with the measles the whole time, and had not been allowed to leave the house or to have any visitors. He had been terribly disappointed, for he had wanted to meet anyone that Bilbo liked so much.   
  
"Aye, to be sure, and it's 'Mr. Frodo' to you, Sam," said his father. "Met him myself, last summer, when he was here at Bag End. You'll probably meet him soon enough. Mr. Bilbo says he's going to ask him to come here to live, soon as he's one-and-twenty. He's got a soft spot for the boy, always did." He shook his head sadly. "An orphan, you know. Terrible thing."  
  
"_That's_ Frodo…I mean…_Mr._ Frodo?" Sam asked again.  
  
"All right, Sam, now that's enough foolery. You finish up with the fires and then come to the kitchen. Mr. Bilbo will be back soon enough and I've got plenty of other things for you to do." He paused and ruffled Sam's hair. "Sam?"  
  
Sam shook himself out of his daze and answered absently, "Yes, Dad."  
  
When his father had left, and Sam was certain that his footsteps had gone all the way back to the kitchen, he returned to Bilbo's desk. As quietly as he could, he pulled the chair out from under the desk, and stepped on it. From there, he clambered up onto Bilbo's desk, placing his feet cautiously between the piles of paper and quills and inkpots. Now his eyes were almost level with the drawing, and he leaned forward to study it in the pale snow-light.   
  
In all his life, Sam had never looked at another hobbit and thought of him as beautiful. He thought his mother was pretty, in the way that mothers are—soft, warm, and comfortably pretty. But now Sam found that "beautiful" was the only word that came to his mind.   
  
Bilbo had sketched his cousin with his head turned slightly to the right, the eyes looking away, as though Frodo had been gazing out of a window while sitting for the portrait. Soft pencil-strokes defined the eyelashes, which were slightly downcast. In spite of the child-like softness of the features, Frodo's face was delicately angular with high cheekbones, a perfectly straight, pointed nose and a firm chin, accented with a gentle cleft. His mouth was full and relaxed, the bow lips almost parted, and although the sketch was only charcoal, Sam could tell that Frodo's eyes were light in colour, clear and very bright.   
  
But Frodo's features were not all that fascinated Sam. As Sam looked at the drawing, he was struck by a soft sadness around Frodo's eyes and mouth that almost made his heart ache. He knew that Frodo was an orphan, and he wondered if he had grown up unhappy because of it. No such look had ever lain on the round, happy face of any other tweenaged hobbit that Sam had ever seen. Yet Sam saw more than melancholy there. He saw a gravity on the fair face that seemed to whisper of things to come, more than of things past. Little wonder that Sam had thought Frodo was an Elf. What could put such a look on the face of a hobbit lad barely out of his childhood?  
  
Sam reached his hand out and touched the tip of one finger to the paper.  
  
"Frodo," he said, and wondered.  
  
Suddenly, the December day seemed to darken to midnight and Sam heard a snowy gust rattle the windowpane. He shivered and wrapped his arms about himself. An inexplicable sadness came over him, and a great sorrow seemed to go by on the sighing wind. Sam longed to crawl underneath Bilbo's desk and hide from it. Tears filled his eyes.   
  
Then it was gone.  
  
"Sam, finish up in there and come along! We haven't got all day."  
  
"Yes, Dad," Sam called. He wiped the back of his hand against his eyes and shook his head. _Now, I've gone and spooked meself! _he thought. He was almost laughing at his own foolishness as he climbed down from Bilbo's desk and went to light the fire.   
  
Yet before he left the study, he cast a look back over his shoulder. The room was shadowy, touched golden with firelight. The portrait, on its white paper, seemed to glow in the dim light. From the doorway, Sam could just make out the curve of the right cheek, and the black pencil-strokes of the eyelashes. For one moment, his heart ached dreadfully with a pain he did not understand, and yet seemed pierced with a fierce joy that was an even greater mystery.  
  
"Maybe he's like that, somehow," Sam whispered to himself, as if in a dream. "He's like that and that's why Mr. Bilbo loves him so much. Maybe he makes him feel like that, too."  
  
"Samwise!"  
  
He took a deep breath and stepped into the hall. "Coming, Dad."  


	2. Penmanship

**Chapter 2: Penmanship**  
  
Sam knew that in all the world, no door was as wonderful as the green door of Bag End. No door was as wonderfully round, as wonderfully green, or had such a wonderful bright brass knob, and no other door opened onto such a wonderful place.  
  
Oh, to be sure, Sam's own hobbit-hole on Bagshot Row was fine and comfortable, but it was nothing like Bag End. At #3 Bagshot Row, Sam would not find an Elvish sword casually propped in the corner of the front parlour, or a map of the Misty Mountains spread out over the kitchen table, or books piled in every corner. No books at all, as a matter of fact.   
  
But most of all, Bag End was wonderful because Bilbo Baggins lived here, and Bilbo had journeyed throughout the wide world and had many adventures, and told astonishing stories, and was teaching Sam his letters this summer. And now Bag End was more wonderful than ever, for Bilbo's cousin Frodo had at last come to stay, just three months shy of his twenty-first birthday.  
  
Sam first met Frodo on a fresh June morning, the sort of brilliant day when it seems possible that winter winds will never blow again. Sam had come up to Bag End with his father, as he often did, and while his father had started work in the garden, Sam wandered off to see if Bilbo was in his study.   
  
Bilbo was not at his desk and, after peeking over his shoulder, Sam tiptoed into the study to say good morning to Frodo's portrait. Since he had first laid eyes on the portrait in December, Sam had become quite familiar with it. He always greeted it, and would sometimes even talk to it, as if he and Frodo had been old friends. Frodo's portrait never answered, of course, but Sam often answered for it, imagining the sorts of things that Frodo would say and the thoughts that would spring from behind that Elvish forehead.   
  
Leaning against the desk, Sam looked up and said, "Good morning, Mr. Frodo."  
  
"Good morning yourself."  
  
Sam jumped so violently that he had to steady himself against the edge of the desk. _Goodness me!_ he thought wildly. _My mind's playin' tricks on me!_ Yet he knew he _had_ heard the voice with his own two ears, plain as he could hear the birds singing outside the window or his father whistling in the garden.   
  
"Mr.…Mr. Frodo?" he asked hesitantly.  
  
"That's right, but I think you'll get a better response if you talk to me instead of my picture," answered the bemused voice behind him.  
  
Sam turned his head slowly to look over his shoulder. His heart pounded from the sudden shock, and he began to feel hot from a great dawning embarrassment.   
  
Sam gaped. He was astounded to behold the face he had grown so accustomed to seeing in black and white pencil strokes suddenly rendered in vibrant colour. Sam saw the same unusual blending of youthful softness with fine-boned angularity, the same full mouth and clear, bright eyes. But Sam now saw the almost cream-coloured fairness of Frodo's complexion and the rosy tint of his mouth. And although Sam had guessed that Frodo's eyes were light, no simple portrait could ever have prepared him for the _colour_ of those eyes. Blue, as blue as the morning glories in his mother's garden when the morning sun shone through them; as blue as the June sky outside the study's round window. And they sparkled; they shimmered as sunlight will when it skips over the surface of a deep blue lake. Sam had never seen eyes so bright in all his life. He leaned against Bilbo's desk and goggled in amazement.  
  
Frodo was sitting in the stuffed chair by the fireplace. A book was turned facedown on his lap, and he leaned forward with his elbows upon his knees. Frodo's sleeves were rolled up, and Sam noticed that his wrists were slender and fair, as were his slim, white hands.  
  
"Mr. Frodo." Sam said, and gulped.  
  
Frodo smiled. "Well, you know _my_ name, at least. But I don't think we've been introduced."  
  
Sam cleared his throat. "I'm Sam. Gamgee. Samwise Gamgee. My dad works for Mr. Bilbo. They call him the Gaffer. My dad, I mean. Not Mr. Bilbo. Of course. No one ever calls Mr. Bilbo anything except Mr. Bilbo. Or Master Bilbo. Or Master Baggins." He clamped his lips together to make himself stop talking.   
  
Frodo stood up and walked over to Sam. He was quite a bit taller, and Sam found himself gawking upwards. Frodo lowered himself until he was at Sam's eye level, and put out his hand.   
  
Sam stared dumbly at Frodo's outstretched hand, then finally came to his senses and put his own into it. He had never realized that his own hands were so small, and so brown. Frodo shook his hand enthusiastically.  
  
"Well, Samwise Gamgee, son of the Gaffer who works for Master Baggins. I'm pleased to meet you. I expect we'll be seeing a bit of each other from now on."  
  
Sam held Frodo's hand and looked into his startling eyes. Suddenly, Sam realized that something from Bilbo's portrait of Frodo was missing in the flesh. Sam did not see any trace of the sad expression that had so struck him, and had seemed to whisper to him of unknown sorrows to come. In Frodo's face, Sam saw only warmth, and life, and merriment. Perhaps Bilbo had drawn his cousin on an unhappy day.  
  
"I hope you'll be able to show me where everything is. It's all rather new to me," Frodo said.  
  
Sam returned Frodo's handshake with great zest. "Of course, Mr. Frodo! Of course!" He felt himself grinning from ear to ear. "Welcome to Bag End! It's a wonderful place!"  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
That had been just two weeks ago, and Bag End was still as wonderful as ever. But now, as Sam stood with his hand on the brass knob of Bag End's green door (the most wonderful door in all the world), he could not bring himself to go inside. He felt quite sick, actually, and he also felt as if he was going to cry. In fact, he _knew_ that he was going to cry.  
  
Sam put his books under his arm and scurried to the woodshed. He sat down on a little pile of logs, drew his knees up to his chest and let tears fill his eyes.   
  
He had been sobbing for quite a while, occasionally sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve, when he heard footsteps behind him. It was too late to hide. In a panic, Sam could only think, _Oh dear, oh dear!  
  
_"Sam, what are you doing out here? What's the matter?"  
  
"Nothing, Mr. Frodo," he said, and wiped his hand over his face.  
  
Frodo crouched down so that he could look Sam in the eye. "Sam, I could hear you crying all the way from the kitchen. It doesn't seem like nothing to me. What is it?"   
  
Sam gripped his copybook so hard that his knuckles turned white. He couldn't bear to look at Frodo when he told him, so he squeezed his eyes shut and then blurted out, "I haven't done my lessons!"  
  
"What?" Frodo asked.  
  
Sam looked at Frodo, his face a portrait of misery. "I haven't done my lessons. The lessons that Mr. Bilbo gave me to do at home. I was supposed to copy a story from this book. I tried but…the words didn't make no sense once I got home and I was by myself. And I tried just copying the shapes of the letters but then they all started to look alike. And I couldn't hold my pencil right. And then I pressed too hard on the paper…and then…and then…"  
  
"And then?"  
  
"And then my pencil broke!" Sam put his copybook over his head and sobbed.   
  
"Oh, Sam!" Frodo said, and Sam looked up to see him laughing.  
  
He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. "'Tain't funny, Mr. Frodo."  
  
"No, Sam, I'm sorry. It isn't funny. But it isn't quite the end of the world, either."  
  
"Mr. Bilbo will be angry. He'll think I've been wasting his time. And after he took all that trouble to ask my dad if he could learn me my letters."  
  
Bilbo would never be angry over something like this."  
  
"I don't know what I'm going to tell him."  
  
"Well, Sam, you're in luck. Bilbo had to go away unexpectedly this morning, and won't be back until this afternoon. So you have plenty of time to finish your lessons before he returns."  
  
Sam looked down at his useless copybook. "It won't do no good," he muttered. "I could have a hundred years and I still wouldn't be able to finish."  
  
"Come on, Sam," Frodo said, taking Sam by the hand. "I'll help you finish."  
  
"Oh, I couldn't ask you to do that, sir. It wouldn't be right. Them being _my_ lessons and all."  
  
Frodo turned around and smiled at Sam. "Sam, I didn't say I would do them _for_ you. Now don't be silly. Come on."  
  
Frodo took Sam to Bilbo's study and sat him down at the desk. Sam's feet dangled over the edge of Bilbo's wooden chair. Frodo pulled up a stool and sat down next to him.  
  
Sam stared at the stool for a moment. It was one of Bilbo's curiosities, and Sam found it grotesquely fascinating. Bilbo had told Sam that it was made from the petrified leg of a great beast, called an oliphaunt, just like in his mother's nursery rhymes. Bilbo had said oliphaunts were real, and lived far in the South, where tall men rode them like ponies. The idea of _anyone_, even the tallest of men, riding a creature with a leg like _that_ had seemed so preposterous to Sam that he had laughed out loud, and petrified leg or not, he had doubted whether such a beast even existed. Wistfully, he had realized that even if it did, he had little chance of ever seeing one with his own eyes.   
  
Taking Sam's copybook, Frodo said, "Now let's see how far you got. Where's this story you were supposed to copy?"  
  
Sam handed Frodo the little leather-bound book that Bilbo had given him. "In there. I didn't get very far at all."  
  
Frodo looked from Sam's copybook to the story and back again. A smile played around the corners of his mouth. He looked up at Sam. "Sam, this isn't nearly as bad as you thought."  
  
"It isn't?"  
  
"No, but…perhaps we should just make a fresh start on a new sheet. What do you think?"  
  
"All right, Mr. Frodo. That sounds like a good idea."  
  
"Fine," Frodo said. He folded back Sam's page to reveal a clean, white one. He opened one of the little drawers in Bilbo's desk and pulled out a pencil. "And look here! A brand new pencil! Guaranteed not to break!"  
  
"Don't be so sure," Sam said in a dejected voice.   
  
"Why don't you get started, and let me know if you get stuck on something."  
  
Sam swallowed hard. "All right, Mr. Frodo."  
  
Sam held the pencil tightly in his chubby brown hand. He bit his lip and squinted and started copying from the book. After a few words, the letters began to swim before his eyes. His hand ached. His own writing on the paper looked clumsy and senseless. He suffered for another moment, then put the pencil down and looked at Frodo in despair.  
  
"I'm stuck."  
  
"All right, what stopped you?"  
  
"Everything. It's useless."  
  
Frodo smiled. "Don't give up so easily, Sam! You've already begun. If something is worth beginning, it's worth seeing through to the end. Now for one thing," he said, "You're holding your pencil much too tightly. You don't have to hold on for dear life. Here, it's like this."  
  
Frodo put the pencil back into Sam's hand. He arranged Sam's fingers around the pencil and then wrapped his hand around Sam's and wrote a few letters on the paper. Sam was astonished to see himself creating words, not in his own awkward lettering, but in Frodo's flowing script. He laughed in delight.  
  
"You see," Frodo said. "It's much easier to do this when your knuckles aren't creaking."  
  
Sam found that with Frodo's hand around his own, the words in the book were much clearer to him. No longer upset over his clumsy hand, or in fear of breaking another pencil, he was able to relax and recognize the letters that he was copying, and he read the words out loud to Frodo while he wrote.   
  
After doing a paragraph and a half, Frodo said, "How much of this did Bilbo tell you to copy?"  
  
"Just a page, sir."  
  
"Well, you're halfway there. I think you've earned a bit of a rest."   
  
Frodo picked up the book they had been copying. "What's this that Bilbo has given you, anyway?"  
  
"I don't know the whole thing, Mr. Frodo. It's too much for me to read right now."  
  
"Hmmm," Frodo said, and leafed through the book. "It looks like a history of the city of Dale."  
  
"Dale!" Sam said with excitement. "I know Dale! Dale is where the dragon lived!"  
  
Frodo smiled. "Well, the dragon really lived under the mountain. But Dale was right next door. I see Bilbo's been telling you about his adventures."  
  
"Oh, Mr. Frodo, I love Mr. Bilbo's stories! The things he's done! When I hear folks saying that he just made all that up I…" Sam clapped a hand over his mouth, aghast at having possibly insulted Bilbo right in front of his cousin.  
  
Instead of looking offended, Frodo laughed out loud. "Yes, I'm sure people _do_ think he made those stories up. But I'm certain that all of his stories true—well, _mostly_ true. I loved listening to them, too, when I was a lad. I still do, in fact." Frodo absently flipped through the book's pages. "Bilbo was very lucky, I think, to have led such an exciting life," he said softly.  
  
Sam looked at Frodo and blinked in surprise. For the first time, Sam saw what he had missed from Bilbo's portrait: that soft sadness around Frodo's eyes and mouth, the curious expression that somehow made Sam's heart ache. A question suddenly came to his mind. "If Mr. Bilbo were to go off again," Sam asked, "Off adventuring, would you go with him, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo looked out the window. His eyes sparkled like clear water in the morning light. He looked back at Sam and answered, "Yes, I believe I would."  
  
"Even if there were dragons, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo leaned towards Sam as if about to confide a great secret, and his eyes danced. "_Especially_ if there were dragons!"  
  
A terrific elation swept over Sam. He had a sudden vision of Frodo as a great adventurer, slaying dragons and performing feats so daring that stories and songs and poems would be written about them. Yet as Sam looked at Frodo, it seemed that slaying dragons and other, merely legendary deeds would be far too commonplace for such an extraordinary hobbit. Sam was certain that only the _greatest_ and _most heroic_ of adventures awaited Frodo, although what that could possibly be, Sam could not imagine.  
  
"Would you take me with you, Mr. Frodo?" Sam asked urgently. "I mean, you can't go off into the wild on your own! I could make myself very useful, I could!"  
  
Frodo laughed brightly. "But Sam, no one is going anywhere!"  
  
"But if you ever _were_…oh, Mr. Frodo, please take me with you! I want to see Elves, and mountains, and do all sorts of grand things, and…" Sam's words faltered in his enthusiasm.   
  
"All right Sam," Frodo laughed. "I promise. If I ever go off in search of dragons, or buried treasure or anything else that remotely qualifies as an adventure, I will be certain that Master Samwise Gamgee accompanies me."  
  
"Oh, thank you! Thank you, Mr. Frodo!" Sam cried, and again Frodo laughed.  
  
"You know what they say. You should be careful what you wish for…you might just get it!" Frodo again looked out the window, at the peaceful, summertime view down the hill and over the fields of the Shire. A butterfly fluttered past the window, the sunlight golden on its wings, but otherwise the morning was completely still. "But I don't think you'll ever have to worry about _this_ one coming true."  
  
"That's all right, sir," Sam said. "I'm not worried!" He looked out the window, then at Frodo, and swung his feet cheerfully.   
  
"Well, I think we should get back to business, Sam."  
  
"Yes, Mr. Frodo."  
  
"Would you like to try writing a little on your own?"  
  
"Not just yet, Mr. Frodo, if you don't mind. I don't think I quite have the hang of it yet. The next paragraph, maybe."  
  
"All right, Sam," Frodo said and again took Sam's hand within his own.  
  
Sam looked at Frodo's slender hand around his sturdy one. He glanced up at Frodo's face for a moment, then back at their joined hands, and was very happy. 


	3. Samwise Tells a Lie

**Chapter 3: Samwise Tells a Lie**  
  
"What do you think happened to his hands?"  
  
Sam had taken the first watch, and had been certain that Frodo was asleep. He turned his head and in the grey light, he saw that Frodo was still awake, sitting with his eyes half-opened, his back against the rocky ledge. Frodo was looking at Gollum, who lay curled into a tight ball some distance away, a wet whistling sound issuing from his open mouth.  
  
"What's that, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
"Gollum…Smeagol's hands. You've seen what they look like, haven't you?"  
  
"I try to look at him as little as I have to." Sam cast a glance at Gollum's huddled shape and made a face. "Wish I didn't have to look at him at all."  
  
"I think they broke all of his fingers," Frodo murmured, almost to himself.   
  
"Hasn't made him any less grabby."  
  
"Sam," Frodo said with light reproach.  
  
"Sorry, Mr. Frodo," Sam said, but he did not _feel_ particularly sorry. Sam did not care for this Gollum. He was hideous to look at, and he stank. Worse yet, every fawning word out of his mouth seemed like a lie, and Sam could not fathom why Frodo paid heed to him at all. _That Stinker will march us straight into Mordor and turn us over to the Orcs, if Mr. Frodo keeps listening to him_, Sam thought. _Sometimes, I wonder if Mr. Frodo knows what he's doing. Sometimes, I think maybe he's_ too _kind_.  
  
"Yes," Frodo said, in that same half-dreaming voice. "I think they broke his fingers, and then they just set like that."  
  
Sam did not answer. He suddenly understood what Frodo meant, and he felt cold and sick. Sam _had_ noticed the swollen, twisted joints of Gollum's fingers, and the way he always licked and rubbed them as if trying to soothe some old hurt. But Sam had dismissed them as just one of Gollum's many grotesque features, and had never related them to his captivity in Barad-dûr. He thought of Gollum's deformed hands in this new light, and Frodo's almost casually spoken remark made him shudder.  
  
"Do you think they will do that to me, Sam? Do you think they will do that to me for _this_?" He looked at Sam and tapped the front of his shirt with his own slender fingers.   
  
"Now, Mr. Frodo," Sam said hastily. "You shouldn't even be thinking about that."  
  
Frodo looked at Sam for a moment. Then, he said quietly, "But I _must_ think about it, Sam. How will I prepare myself for it, if I don't?"  
  
Sam opened his mouth but could think of no way to respond. His eyes fell upon Frodo's pale hand, resting over the Ring. Even in the harsh weather of Emyn Muil, Frodo's hand looked as white as pearl above the filthy brown cuff of his shirt, with only a faint redness colouring his knuckles.    
  
A terrible vision came unbidden to Sam's mind, of Frodo lying bound with his hands broken and bleeding, the fine bones shattered. Sam had slammed a door on his hand when he was a child, and he remembered how the pain had been so immense that he had thrown up, and then fainted. Later, he had felt terribly foolish when he found out that he had only broken two tiny bones, one in the forefinger, one in the middle. Only two little bones, and the pain had been immeasurable. What would it be like to have every bone in one's hands deliberately broken, slowly ground into fragments? Could anyone bear such a horror?  
  
Sam shook his head to clear the awful image. He looked from Frodo's white hand to his face. Frodo's eyes had slipped closed, and Sam thought he must have finally fallen asleep, in spite of his dark thoughts.  
  
Now that Frodo slept, Sam crept as far away from him as he dared, and let tears come to his eyes. He put his head on his knees and his hands into his hair and cried as quietly as he could, not wanting to wake Frodo, not wanting him to see how frightened he was.   
  
In fact, Sam was terrified, and bewildered. During these long days when Frodo spoke little, if indeed he spoke at all, Sam's mind had begun to revisit everything that had happened since he and Frodo and Pippin had set out from Bag End in last year's mellow autumn sunshine. And Sam found that no matter how he turned it over in his head, he could not understand how things had gone so wrong.   
  
Almost bitterly, Sam recalled those September days that now seemed to have been left on the other side of years, not mere months. He had understood that they were in danger, that Frodo had taken a great peril upon himself, but their journey had nonetheless seemed to begin as a grand adventure. Even the Black Riders, as dreadful as they had been, had barely shaken Sam's enthusiasm. What were Black Riders in the bright woods of the Shire, when he was traveling by Frodo's side, as he had always longed to do, and meeting Elves― Elves!―and mysterious characters like Strider? _What would the Gaffer think of me, keepin' company with such folk?_ he had thought, and it had almost made him laugh.   
  
Then they had come to Weathertop, to a chill October's night when the dark had suddenly seemed to press around so closely. Sam had strolled away from the fire to stretch his legs, and a dread he could not describe had overwhelmed him. He had felt it before, though, this inexplicable terror, on a long-ago December afternoon, when he had been frightened so badly that he had wanted to hide underneath Bilbo's desk. The feeling at Weathertop had been like that, as if some dreadful thing had crept up behind him, making him wish for a small place to hide until it passed.   
  
By the end of that dark night, Sam had understood what was meant by _adventure_. It was not sitting by the fire in Bilbo's study with a mug of hot cider between his hands and his eyes wide in wonder as the fascinating old hobbit told tales of dragons and treasures. It was pain, and terror, and the shadow of death. It was Frodo, who had held his hand and taught him to write, who had listened so indulgently to his boyhood chatter, his own gentle, kind and wise Mr. Frodo, spilling out his life's blood on the cold ground, miles away from home or aid. Sam no longer wanted any part of this adventure.  
  
At night, he had held Frodo's icy hand and whispered in his ear. "When we get to Rivendell, Mr. Frodo, you'll give that Thing over to the Elves, and we'll go home. We'll bar the door and there'll be no more adventure for either one of us." Frodo had never answered. He had lain shivering in a dark stupor, his half-lidded eyes staring up at the night sky, and Sam had tended to him with pity and grief, remembering a bright-eyed youth who had wanted to look for dragons. A dark superstition had crept into Sam's mind on those endless days and nights between Weathertop and Rivendell, a belief that they had perhaps brought this doom upon themselves in their innocence. If Sam could have gone back to his childhood, he would never, ever have breathed a word of dragons or adventure to Frodo. And if Frodo had brought it up himself, Sam would have shaken his head, and discouraged him, and told him never to think or speak of such things again.  
  
But when Frodo had stood up at the Council, and taken the burden of the quest on himself, Sam had known that he would go with him. In that moment, he had felt no fear, only great pride, and love. _He's like that, Mr. Frodo is,_ Sam had thought. _He couldn't be no other way. _Sam entertained no boyish fancies of adventure; he knew only that he could never have returned to the Shire and lain in his own comfortable bed at night, knowing what Frodo bore, wondering where he was, if he was in pain, or dying or dead. Sam would not have enjoyed another day's peace in his life, if he had let Frodo leave Rivendell without him.   
  
But now he and Frodo were alone in the wasteland on the edge of Mordor. Frodo had almost died twice, at Weathertop of course, and then again in Moria, and both times Sam had been powerless to help him. The Fellowship was broken, all those valiant companions scattered to the wind. Gandalf was dead, and how could that be? How could that be? They were at the mercy of some vile creature, whose treacherous mind was no doubt filled with a host of dark designs. And still, their journey was not near its end, and what sort of end that would be Sam hardly dared to think.  
  
Sam could not understand how everything had gone so very wrong. Silently and desperately, he wept over it all.  
  
Gollum stirred in his sleep and smacked his lips together. The sound of it made Sam's stomach turn. He lifted his head and looked at Gollum. The creature had flopped over onto his back, and his twisted hands were splayed out flat at his sides. Sam's eyes passed from Gollum to Frodo, who was sleeping with one fair hand on his breast, the other at his side, palm-up to the grey sky. The Council in Rivendell had been a grander company of folk than Sam had ever seen, or imagined. And his own master, Frodo Baggins of the Shire, was in the midst of them, speaking the words that not one of those fine others would have dared even to think. _I will take the Ring_, he had said. And on his face had been a look that Sam had never seen, of dread, and terrible sorrow, and almost of disbelief, as if some other will had used his small voice for its own, unknowable purpose. Sam remembered it now and he knew suddenly that Frodo, too, wondered what had happened, how life could go so wrong as to turn the quiet master of Bag End into a hunted wanderer with the fate of the world around his very neck. His heart went out to Frodo, who did not complain, or weep, or question, who merely put one foot in front of the other every day, laboring towards some unspeakable end, in silent compliance with fate.  
  
Sam wiped his hand across his eyes. Frodo's fate was his own, and it had been from the moment that he had laid eyes on the blue-eyed boy in Bilbo's study. It seemed to Sam that it may have been so even before that. Perhaps it had been so forever. If Frodo must bear this burden, Sam must bear it with him and questioning would not serve his master on their road, nor would crying, nor would fear.   
  
Sam crept back to Frodo's side. He gently laid his hand in Frodo's upturned palm and in sleep, Frodo's slender fingers curled loosely around Sam's. Sam looked at their joined hands and considered what Frodo had said before he had fallen asleep. He shivered at the knowledge that Frodo deliberately burdened himself with such ideas, as if it were an exercise, a preparation for the torment that awaited him.   
  
"No one's going to do anything like that to you as long as I can help it, Mr. Frodo," Sam muttered to himself. "You don't have to prepare yourself for anything."  
  
"No, Sam," Frodo said, startling him. He wondered if Frodo had spoken in his sleep.  
  
"Mr. Frodo?" he asked.  
  
Frodo's eyes opened and he turned his head to look at Sam. "I said no, Sam."  
  
"I…I don't know what you mean, sir."  
  
Frodo sat up, and when he spoke, the half-dreaming sound was gone from his voice. "Sam, I know you mean to come with me to the end, but have you thought of what will come before the end?"  
  
Sam looked at Frodo in silence, and for an endless moment his mind filled with shadowy images of torment and suffering and pain beyond imagining.   
  
"I have, Mr. Frodo. I have," he said.  
  
"Then you must know that if something happens, if I am taken…" Here Frodo's words failed him and he seemed to ponder what he would say next. A note of desperate pleading was in his voice when he spoke again. "Sam, what will it serve for you to be taken with me? Shall we both go to Barad-dûr? Shall we both die there? Someone will need to go back, and tell the others that I have failed, so that they can be prepared for what will come. And if I have no other comfort, at least I will know that you are alive, and safe."  
  
"Now, Mr. Frodo…"  
  
"No, Sam, listen to me. Promise me that if anything happens to me, and you have the chance to escape, you will."  
  
"Mr. Frodo, how could you…"  
  
"Sam, please." Frodo reached out and took Sam's hands within his own. "Promise me." He tightened his hold on Sam's hands until it was almost painful. Sam looked into Frodo's eyes, and saw an anguished appeal in them.   
  
Sam was honest to a fault, even by hobbit standards, and had told so few lies in his life that he remembered every one of them. He had certainly never lied to Frodo. Now he looked from Frodo's pleading eyes, to the delicate sculpting of bones and tendons in his hands, and Gollum's gnarled fingers came to his mind.   
  
_I'll never let anything like that happen to you,_ he wanted to say. _I'd have to be stone dead before I'd let that happen._  
  
Sam looked into Frodo's eyes and knew that he could not burden him with the truth. He lied to his master, for the first time in his life.   
  
"I promise, Mr. Frodo."  
  
Relief blossomed on Frodo's face and he smiled. "Thank you, Sam."   
  
"Why don't you get some sleep now? It won't do us any good to sit around talking about such gloomy things."  
  
Frodo sighed. "You're right, Sam. But only for a little while. Wake me when it's your turn."  
  
"I will, Mr. Frodo."  
  
Frodo lay down beside Sam and was asleep within moments. When Sam heard Frodo's breathing deepen into slumber, he reached out and took Frodo's hand between his own, and held it as gently as possible, sheltered like a baby bird between his own brown palms. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
_Author's Notes: I realize this was an abrupt shift from the previous two chapters, and some people who read this story when it was first posted found it jarring. I actually like that people found it jarring, because I hoped that the reader would feel the same way Sam does in this chapter…bewildered! I didn't mean for this story to be a lengthy Frodo & Sam childhood fic; the first two chapters are an idyllic backdrop for what eventually happens to these two.  
  
I don't usually answer reviews in these Author's Notes, just because I doubt that everyone would find it interesting. But I do want to briefly respond to what Frentlen said about introducing Sam's sexual feelings to Frodo (an entire page of reviews seems to have disappeared from this site, but I did receive that review via e-mail as well.)   
  
I love Frodo/Sam slash fiction and some of the finest and most moving LoTR fanfic that I've ever read has been in that genre. However, I doubt that I will ever write any of my own. First of all, I don't know how I would handle a relationship that's almost sacred in my eyes. Second, there are so many amazingly talented slash writers out there (among them Merripestin, Janis Cortese, the newly-discovered Teasel and the always-brilliant, astonishing Mirabella) that I doubt anything I write in that vein could even compare to what they've done. I love to write about Frodo and Sam, but so far, I've always been deliberately vague about the nature of their relationship. There is a great deal of love between these two, but I have yet to write a story where it erupts into passion!_ _I've had readers ask me "Did they?" or "Are they?" about certain scenes that I've written, and that's fine with me. If you want to interpret the story as slash, OK, if you don't, that's OK too! Maybe someday I'll get a bee in my bonnet and write a true slash story, but for now, this is strictly Tolkienesque and platonic! _


	4. Sam Remembers

_Author's Note: I apologize for taking so long to update this. The story was completed over a year ago, but I always felt it needed work. I really wanted to take care of this "unfinished business" before RoTK's release, so I've done what I could with it. Thanks to all who reviewed or inquired about this story.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~_  
  
  
It was in the darkness of the tower that Sam realized he had made a promise he did not know how to keep.  
  
Not the lie of a promise that he had given to Frodo, to ease his mind, but the one he had made to the Elves, the only one that held sway in Sam's heart, bound there by duty and love. For all his duty and love, Sam thought, he had already broken that promise once and he now saw no way to mend it.   
  
Sam inched forward, overwhelmed by monstrously clear images of what Frodo might be enduring. Sam's imagination had never been so vivid and he cursed it, for it drained him of will and reason.  
  
Panic began to smother Sam, and the entire weight of the tower seemed to press down upon him, innumerable rooms, turrets, dungeons, and every one of them no doubt locked and guarded. _A needle in a haystack!_ he thought hysterically. _If I had a thousand years, it would be no use! And I might have only minutes!_ And what if Frodo was not even in the tower any longer? Had they taken him to Barad-dûr? Had they killed him? Sam breathed in shallow gasps as his mind whirled in fear. He imagined himself in Mordor for an eternity, still unable to find Frodo in all of its great waste, and felt suddenly, madly tempted to rush forward blindly, shrieking "Frodo! Frodo!" at the top of his lungs, even if he roused every devil in Mordor by doing it.   
  
The Ring was heavy around his neck. How had Frodo ever borne this for so long? And more than its weight tormented Sam; it seemed to him like a beacon around his neck, shining forth with a great, venomous light that only evil eyes could see. Surely the Eye of the Enemy knew that he was here, or soon would. He could do nothing. All was lost. Sam sank to his knees, frozen in place, like a mouse that knows it has been spotted by a hawk, and, in terror, has lost all ability to save itself.   
  
He remembered himself as a child, begging Frodo to take him along if he ever went on an adventure. His own childish voice mocked him, _I could make myself very useful, I could! _If Sam had not been so terrified, he would have laughed bitterly. Very useful he had made himself, indeed. He let Sting fall to the ground and put his arms over his head.   
  
Yet even as he cowered, bewildered with despair, he suddenly heard his child's voice again.   
  
_I'm stuck._   
  
And Frodo's voice, which Sam believed he would never hear again, answered, borne across decades of time. _All right, what stopped you?  
  
Everything. It's useless.  
  
Don't give up so easily, Sam! You've already begun. If something is worth beginning, it's worth seeing through to the end.  
  
_A voice cried in his mind then, _End! You have come to the end already! All is lost!_ But Sam did not know this voice; it was not his own. It was not Frodo's.  
  
Sam felt a sudden clearing in his mind, as a break will sometimes appear in the thickest fog, and he saw Frodo, as he had been on the long summer afternoons when he had helped Sam with his letters, in those times when no shadow had ever touched them. The memory brought joy with it, and love, and a light that banished dark imaginings and left no hiding place for fear or despair.  
  
_It is worth seeing through to the end_, Sam thought, and knew that he would keep his promise.  
  
He stood up and took Sting in his hand. "I won't leave you, Mr. Frodo," he said to the darkness. "I'm coming."  
  



	5. At Rivendell

They had been a fortnight at Rivendell, and though Sam was eager to return to the Shire, and while his things were already packed and laid neatly at the foot of his bed, he felt a pang of regret at leaving the Last Homely House. Sam looked round his small, pretty room. He had long ceased to marvel over the idea of himself keeping company with Elves, yet he still wondered if anyone in the Shire would ever believe that Samwise Gamgee, Hamfast's son, had once had his very own room in the ancient elven city of Rivendell.   
  
Frodo's room was next to his own, and when they had first come to Rivendell, Sam had slept with his door open every night so that he might hear his master if he cried out or called for him. Frodo's sleep had often been uneasy in Minas Tirith, and Sam had grown accustomed to waking in the night to sit with him. Yet the power of the Elves was still strong in Rivendell, and had offered healing to Frodo that even the hands of the King had not been able to grant. Frodo had slept peacefully every night in Rivendell, to Sam's great relief.   
  
Frodo was not in his room, and Sam knew he must be spending this last evening with Bilbo. Sam walked down the lamplit hall and, as always, the great arched passageway made him feel small and uncomfortable. He never walked in the center of the hall, for it was so wide that he felt lost in it. Instead, he stayed close to the wall, and trailed his hand on its richly carved surface, as he would have held onto a banister to reassure himself on a steep set of stairs.  
  
He knocked on the door and Frodo's voice came softly from within. "Come in."  
  
Bilbo's room was little for the Elves, but Sam had always thought it large, and very elegant, with a wide balcony that looked out over valley and the falls. It was a frosty night, so the great doors that led to the balcony were closed, and the firelight's reflection glowed warmly from their glass panes.   
  
Bilbo was asleep in his chair before the fire, and Frodo sat across from him, a collection of papers upon his lap. He glanced up at Sam with an amused look on his face. "I've gone through as many of Bilbo's things as I possibly could," he whispered. "But I should need another month here if I were to straighten it all out. I don't think that even _he_ knows what he has here!"  
  
Sam pulled up a chair next to Frodo's. "Do you think you can make sense of it all, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo looked helplessly into his lap. "I think so, but it will take a deal of work. And yet, I am quite looking forward to getting back to the Shire, and locking myself up with all of it. I've been thinking, Sam," he said, turning round in his chair. "Do you think Lobelia might sell Bag End back to me? I would dearly love to settle into the old place again."  
  
"I don't know, Mr. Frodo. She was awfully happy to get her hands on it once, if you don't mind me saying so. I don't know as she'd be inclined to give it up."  
  
Frodo laughed a little. "You're right, Sam. I believe if I had left even a day later, she would have turned me out in the cold! Ah, well," he sighed, "I only hope she's kept the place up. I'd hate to find it in disarray."  
  
Sam did not answer. He remembered well the visions he had seen in the Lady Galadriel's mirror, and he was uneasy about what they _would_ find in the Shire. Sam wanted nothing more than to have Frodo return to Bag End, and to go back to work for him, as if nothing had ever happened. Yet Sam doubted if anything would ever again be so simple.  
  
Bilbo muttered in his sleep and Sam glanced at him. When they arrived in Rivendell, Sam had been shocked at how Bilbo had aged. Yet Frodo had not seemed surprised, and later, he had told Sam of what Queen Arwen had said about Bilbo, and the Ring.   
  
"It was the Ring, Sam, that kept him alive, and kept him young for so many years," Frodo had said. "Now everything that was bound to the Ring must pass away."  
  
Sam had thought for a moment, and then said, "But you seem the same as ever, Mr. Frodo. You haven't changed, have you?"  
  
Frodo had looked away, a thoughtful look upon his face. "I did not have the Ring as long as Bilbo," he had said, almost to himself. "And yet, I _do_ feel different. Not on the outside. But I am changed."  
  
"What do you mean, Mr. Frodo?" Sam had asked, but Frodo had changed the subject, and Sam had not brought it up again.   
  
Sam looked at Frodo. In the warm glow of the firelight, he did indeed look the same as always. He was thinner of course, and quieter than he had once been, but to Sam, Frodo hardly seemed different from the bright youth that he had first met on a long-ago June morning. Sam had only ever found his master altered in those last dreadful miles before the mountain, and yet he had always been able to see a tenuous vestige of his own Frodo, even within the madness that had almost consumed him at the end. When the Ring had gone into the fire, Sam had once again seen only dear Frodo, as elven-fair and mild as the soft-featured lad in Bilbo's old portrait.   
  
Sam glanced above the fire. Propped upon the mantel, with a great deal of Bilbo's other oddments, was the very portrait of Frodo that had once hung in the study at Bag End. The Elves had framed it for Bilbo, preserving it under a thin piece of glass and surrounding it with an intricately carved frame, so it had not creased or faded, although it was over thirty years old. It astonished Sam that so much time had passed, and so much had happened since he had first gazed in wonder at those carefully penciled features.   
  
Frodo had noticed Sam's silence, and he followed his eyes to the mantel and laughed. "That picture! I can't believe Bilbo still has it. Do you remember how it used to hang in his study?"  
  
"I remember it very well, Mr. Frodo," Sam said quietly.   
  
Frodo sighed. "Do you know, Sam, sometimes, when I think of those days, they almost seem to have happened to someone else? I remember them, of course, but the way I would remember something I read in a book, while everything that has happened in these last years is very clear. Do you feel the same way?"  
  
"No, sir," Sam replied. "It's all very clear to me. Especially them old days at Bag End."  
  
Frodo was quiet for a moment, then said, "You're lucky, Sam. I wonder if it will be like that for me."  
  
"It will be, Mr. Frodo. Soon as we get home, 'twill all come back to you, and you'll feel as if you never left."  
  
Frodo smiled. "I hope so, Sam. I hope it will be exactly like that."  
  
Sam put his hand on Frodo's shoulder reassuringly. Frodo smiled at him, and in Sam's eyes, he was the same as Sam had always known him.


	6. A Storm Comes

The weather was fine and spring-like that early March. Every day the sun shone brightly, and the crocuses and snowdrops sent up green shoots from the earth. The trees, believing winter to be over at last, swelled with buds. Birds sat and sang amidst the ripening branches, and children's voices could be heard out-of-doors until long after dusk.   
  
The warm weather was making Rose Gamgee restless. She was nine months along and had a terrible case of spring fever. As yet another day dawned bright and warm, Rose was suddenly taken with the idea of visiting her family.  
  
Sam was not pleased. "You'll be having that baby any minute now, and you want to go traipsing off to Bywater? I don't think that's a good idea, Rose-lass."  
  
"Nonsense," she said cheerfully. "I'm weeks away from having this baby, I can tell. If I spend another minute cooped up while it's so beautiful out, you'll be _wishing_ I had gone. And it's only ten miles or so…what's the harm?"  
  
"The harm is…" Sam thought for a moment. "The harm is you never can tell about weather this time of year. We could have a blizzard all of sudden and then you'd be stuck out there. And you could have the baby, whether you think it's weeks away or not, and it might be days before I could come and fetch the both of you back. That's the harm."  
  
Rose looked out the window, at the bright spring sun lying over the greening fields of the Shire. "Sam, really…a blizzard? Why, it's practically summertime!"  
  
Sam had to agree: he had never seen an earlier or warmer spring, and it looked every bit as though 1421 was going to be as pleasant and bountiful as 1420 had been. He relented at last, and drove Rose to Bywater in the cart.   
  
"I'll be back in three days, Rose-lass," he said from the cart's high seat. "Have a good time."  
  
He tugged on the pony's reins and set off down the lane. Just before he went round the bend, he turned and waved to his wife. Rose stood in the doorway of the Cotton farmhouse and waved back cheerfully in the fresh spring sunshine.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
By the time Sam returned to Bag End, grey clouds had begun to streak across the sky and Sam felt a damp breeze blowing in from the East. He almost turned the cart right back around to fetch Rose from Bywater, then thought better of it. Most likely, it was just a rainshower, not surprising after all the warm weather they had been having. Nevertheless, Sam spent the rest of the day checking the sky and testing the wind.  
  
Frodo found him standing in the middle of the kitchen garden, his hands in his pockets, staring uneasily at the murky sky.   
  
"I don't like it, Mr. Frodo. I shouldn't have let her go."  
  
Frodo glanced upwards. Unlike Sam, he had never had a talent for reading the weather. "It doesn't look like much of anything to me, Sam, but if it makes you feel better, perhaps you _should_ go back to Bywater and bring Rose home."  
  
"I'm not sure about driving the cart twenty miles there and back, what with night coming on." Sam thought for a moment and then laughed, "And then there'll be nothing but a bit of a rainstorm, and tomorrow morning will be another fine day, and Rose will be in quite the state at being jostled all the way home in the dark for nothing!"  
  
Frodo laughed. "That she will! Why don't you wait until morning? If it still looks threatening, you can at least go to Bywater by the light of day."  
  
"I suppose that will have to do, Mr. Frodo," Sam replied. He cast a final glance at the sky, and went inside to have supper with Frodo.   
  
Frodo went to bed early after supper, saying that the sudden change in the weather had tired him. Sam stayed up a bit later. Before he went to bed, he stood on Bag End's porch one last time and sniffed the air. The wind seemed stronger now, and Sam was certain he smelled snow upon it. He went to bed with a troubled mind.   
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
In the dark, early hours of the twelfth, March decided to have one last dalliance with winter, after all.   
  
The snow began around midnight with a few sparkling flakes. By one in the morning the snow had thickened to a steady fall. By two o'clock, the wind had begun to shriek, and the snow fell with such fury that anyone peering out would have thought that a white curtain had been hung outside of their window.  
  
Sam awoke shortly after dawn to pale lavender light at the window. He was aware of two things at once: that Rose's place next to him was empty, and that the colour of the morning could only mean snow. He rose swiftly and went to the window and groaned at the January-white world that lay before him. All of Hobbiton lay beneath shapeless drifts, and the snow was still falling.   
  
"Practically summertime, indeed!" Sam said.  
  
He continued to mutter reproachfully under his breath as he got dressed. He knew it would be senseless to try to reach Bywater this morning. In fact, if the snow kept up like this, it would be at least two days before he would be able to make it to the Cotton farm, and even then only if the blizzard was followed by a quick spring thaw.   
  
Sam walked out of his room and was surprised to see that Frodo's bedroom door was open, for he usually slept later than Sam. He poked his head into the room, but found it empty. The curtains were still drawn over the window, and the blankets lay in a tangle upon the bed. Sam went down the hall to the kitchen, stopping to knock on the door of the study to ask Frodo what he wanted for breakfast. It was unusual, but not out of the question, for Frodo to start working as soon as he rose.  
  
Sam did not hear a sound from the study, not even a rustle of paper. He knocked again, and again, only silence answered him. Sam put his hand on the brass knob and opened the door.   
  
The study was cold and gloomy. No fire burned, and it seemed that Frodo had not been in the room at all that morning. His things were arranged upon the desk in neat, undisturbed stacks, and a doleful wintry light fell upon them. Sam paused for a moment, looking at the old desk, the same one that had always stood in that corner under the window. The desk had been one of the few pieces of furniture that Frodo had sent ahead to Crickhollow, for he had not wanted Lobelia to have it. "She would probably use it for firewood, anyway," Frodo had said with a laugh.   
  
Frodo had, however, left Lobelia the awful oliphaunt-leg footstool.   
  
The oliphaunt-leg was long gone, but the desk had come back, and Sam had been happy to see it return to its place below the study's round window. It had somehow made Bag End feel familiar, and safe again. Yet now as he looked at the desk, with its neat little piles of paper and books, it seemed forlorn. In the pale light it appeared almost ghostly, as if Sam looked upon a faded image of the room as it had been so many years before, when Bilbo had still been master of Bag End. The apparition was so compelling that Sam glanced above the desk, almost expecting to see Bilbo's pencil portrait of Frodo hanging in its old place upon the wall.   
  
Sam realized he was daydreaming, and he shook himself and rubbed his arms against the chill in the room. He thought about starting a fire in the study, if only to chase away the gloom, then decided that he should get breakfast going instead. Frodo was probably in the kitchen, building up the fire.  
  
But the kitchen was empty as well. Sam heard only snow at the window and the faint crackle of last night's embers upon the hearth. "Mr. Frodo?" he called out, and his voice sounded small, and almost frightened. No one answered.  
  
"Mr. Frodo?" he called, a little louder, and now the silence was palpable, and baleful.   
  
Suddenly Bag End seemed too quiet and Sam was certain that he was alone. A strange unease began to grow in his mind. He stepped into the hall and thought, his hand cupped beneath his chin. _He can't have gone out…perhaps he's in one of the pantries…but wouldn't I hear him, if he was?_ Sam glanced distractedly at the pegs by the front door. He noticed then that Frodo's grey cloak was missing.   
  
Quickly, Sam went to the front hall and put on his cloak. He opened the door and icy wind struck him. After shutting the door with some difficulty, he began to make his way down the path.   
  
Sam walked with his head down, the snow blowing into his face. He wound his cloak tightly about himself and waded through snow that came to his hips. In little time, his teeth were chattering.   
  
_This is ridiculous!_ Sam thought. _Frodo can't possibly be out here!_ He was about to turn and head back inside, when he spotted him.  
  
Frodo had made it past the gate, and he stood at the edge of the low rise that looked out over Party Field. He was atop a snowdrift, and his back was to Sam. Frodo seemed to fade in and out of Sam's sight. The grey cloak of Lórien and the swirling snow rendered him almost invisible.   
  
"Mr. Frodo!" Sam called, but the wind took his voice and Frodo did not turn around.   
  
Sam struggled closer to Frodo. He could not imagine how Frodo had made it to the edge of the hill, or climbed on top of the snow in such a storm. Sam suddenly thought of Legolas, and how lightly the Elf had walked over the snows of Caradhras.  
  
Sam made it to the gate and leaned against it, panting. "Mr. Frodo!"  
  
Frodo turned around then to look at Sam, and Sam shivered with more than cold. Frodo's face was grim and set. Two bright spots of wind-burned red stood out on his cheeks, but he was otherwise pale. His eyes glittered blue, as icy as the snow, and they were very wide, yet distant. His dark hair was frosted with snow, and it tossed about his face. He held something chest-high between his two hands, and at first, Sam thought it was an umbrella. He peered through the snow, and realized with some alarm that Frodo was holding Sting, unsheathed, its blade pointed down, the hilt against his breast.  
  
"What are you doing, Mr. Frodo?" Sam called against the wind.  
  
Frodo stared at Sam, his grim, wide-eyed expression never changing. Sam waded closer to him, and he could see that Frodo was shivering, and that his mouth trembled in the cold. At length, Frodo answered. "I am keeping watch," he said, and his voice was high and eerie in the storm.   
  
Sam stopped where he stood. "Against what, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo did not answer him. He turned his face away and once again looked out into the blowing snow.  
  
Suddenly, Sam remembered the date. It was March the twelfth, the day before Frodo was poisoned by the spider and taken captive by the enemy. Sam instantly recalled how he had found Frodo in a daze last October the sixth, and he realized that what he had come to think of as "the old troubles" had come back, yet again.  
  
Sam took a few floundering steps and came to the foot of the snowdrift. He did not dare to climb up next to Frodo, for fear that the drift would collapse and bury them both. He reached up and touched Frodo's arm.  
  
"Come inside, Mr. Frodo. This is no weather to be out in."  
  
Frodo continued to look out, as if he had not heard Sam at all. Sam saw now that Frodo's expression was neither grim nor set. Frodo looked terrified, exhausted, and lost. It had been long since Sam had seen his master in such a state, and his heart ached with pity.  
  
He climbed up onto the edge of the drift, as closely as he dared. Leaning forward, he wrapped an arm around Frodo's waist.  
  
"Come along, Mr. Frodo," he said, as gently as he could while making his voice heard above the wind. "There's no need to keep watch. Come inside before you catch your death."  
  
Frodo looked down at Sam, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. Suddenly, he shook his head and his face seemed to clear, as if he had awakened from a bad dream.   
  
"Well of course, Sam," he said, and began to climb down from the drift. "What on earth am I doing out here?" He looked at Sting in his hands. "And whyever did I bring _this_ with me?" He laughed a little, as if he found the whole situation terribly silly.   
  
"I don't know, Mr. Frodo," Sam said. "Let's just get inside now."  
  
"Of course, Sam, of course."  
  
Sam and Frodo struggled through the snow, their arms about each other. Frodo used Sting like a staff to prop himself up against the wind. At last they made it back to Bag End.  
  
Sam closed the door and leaned against it. "Not fit for man or beast out there," he said, puffing from the exertion.   
  
"No, it certainly isn't," Frodo said. He shook snow from his hair. He was about to take off his cloak when he looked down at Sting, still in his hand. For a moment, a shadow of uncertainty seemed to pass over his face, and Sam looked at him with concern. Then Frodo smiled and shook his head and dropped the elven sword casually into the umbrella stand.   
  
"Not much good in a snowstorm, is it, Sam?" he asked with a smile.   
  
Sam smiled back, feeling greatly relieved by Frodo's apparent recovery. "No, Mr. Frodo. Not much use at all."  
  
They went into the kitchen together. Sam built up a roaring fire and they had their breakfast sitting before it, slowly feeling the icy chill leave them.  
  
Neither Sam nor Frodo mentioned that morning's odd events for the rest of the day. The snow tapered off around three in the afternoon, and the Shire lay quietly under its white weight. Frodo spent most of the day in his study, and Sam saw little of him.  
  
After supper, Frodo sat by the fire with his tea. He seemed lost in thought as the firelight flickered in his eyes and shadows played upon his face. Sam smoked his pipe and looked at him for a long moment.  
  
At last, he said softly, "Mr. Frodo, are you all right?"  
  
Frodo did not look at Sam, but a half-smile formed upon his lips. "Of course I am, Sam."  
  
"Is tomorrow worrying you, sir?"  
  
"Tomorrow?" Frodo asked. Sam thought he saw something pass over Frodo's features. Then it was gone. "No, Sam. I am not worried about tomorrow." He put his cup down and rose. "But I _am_ tired. I think I will go to bed early. Good night, Sam."   
  
Without looking at Sam, Frodo left the room. Sam listened as his footsteps went down the hall, and his bedroom door closed with a soft click.   
  
Sam sighed. He drew on his pipe and wished deeply that Rose had stayed home.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Frodo's door was still closed when Sam rose in the morning. He put on his dressing gown and knocked at the door. When no answer came, he took a deep breath and went in.  
  
The room was dim; it was yet early, and the curtains were shut tightly against the dawn. It was also stifling, and Sam could see from the great mound of ashes in the hearth that Frodo had built a fire much too large for the small room, as if he had been terribly cold in the night. Frodo was in bed, with the covers drawn up so high that Sam could see only a bit of his dark curls against the pillow.  
  
"Mr. Frodo?" Sam said quietly. He laid his hand on Frodo's shoulder and felt him shivering beneath the many layers of quilt and blanket. Frodo did not respond.  
  
Gently, Sam folded the blankets down so that he could see Frodo's face. He knelt down beside the bed and stroked his master's hair from his brow. "Oh, Mr. Frodo," he whispered.  
  
Frodo was curled on his side, so tightly that his knees were almost touching his chest. His hands were clasped together under his chin. His face was ashen, save for the redness that yesterday's windburn had printed on his cheeks, and he shone with perspiration, even though his teeth chattered. His brows were drawn together over tightly shut eyes, and his mouth moved soundlessly as if he tried to speak. He was in pain, Sam could see, and wandering in his mind.  
  
"It's all right," Mr. Frodo, Sam said, and kissed his cold cheek. "It's all right. I'm here."  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Sam could do little for Frodo all that day. At times Frodo passed into an uneasy sleep, at others, he managed to rise to a feverish awareness, and Sam was able to sit him up and give him some cool tea with honey. But for most of the day, he was delirious: he tossed restlessly and carried on rambling conversations, of which Sam could make out but a few words, and none that seemed to make any sense. Several times he cried out, and once he wept, as desperately as a child lost in the woods who has given up all hope of ever finding his way home. The sound of it smote at Sam's heart, and he put his arms about his master and held him, although whether Frodo took any comfort from it, Sam could not tell.  
  
At dusk, Sam went into Frodo's room to light the lamps and put more wood on the fire. He felt the need to keep the room bright, as if this would help lead Frodo out of his darkness. Frodo had fallen into a thin sleep, and he seemed to be almost at rest for the first time that long day.  
  
Sam stood by the window, trimming a lamp-wick. Outside, the Shire was still and silent, enshrouded in snow. The purple shadows of evening lay over the snow-covered fields, and a few light flurries had begun to fall again.  
  
"I'm sorry," Sam heard Frodo whisper faintly.   
  
Sam set the lamp on the little table by the window and went to Frodo's side. "Mr. Frodo? Are you awake, sir?" Sam sat down on the edge of the bed and saw that Frodo's eyes were still closed. He was dreaming, or slipping into delirium again.  
  
"I'm sorry," Frodo said again, and then sighed wearily.  
  
"There's nothing to be sorry for, Mr. Frodo," Sam said comfortingly, although he doubted that Frodo even knew he was there.  
  
Frodo took a deep breath and his hand sought his neck, but he did not touch the white jewel that lay there. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry…I didn't know…what have I done? What have I done?"   
  
Sam saw tears begin to glisten underneath Frodo's eyelashes. He passed his hand through Frodo's hair and murmured, "Shh, shh," but Frodo turned his head away from Sam's touch.  
  
"All has gone with it," he said, and shuddered. "I see. I see. Oh…I am sorry. I did not know. Oh, bring it back. Bring it back." He wept.  
  
Sam looked on and did not know what to say, or even to think. He comforted his master as best as he could, while his own tears flowed freely down his face.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
It was after midnight, and Sam had just begun to doze. The sound of Frodo's voice awakened him.  
  
"Sam, are you there?"  
  
Sam leaned forward from the chair he had placed beside Frodo's bed. Frodo's eyes were open, and clear, and he lay on his side with his hand outstretched. Sam took Frodo's hand between his own and said, "Yes, Mr. Frodo. I'm here."  
  
"Why is it so dark? Will the day never come?"  
  
Sam smiled. "The day has come and gone, sir. It's tomorrow already."  
  
"Tomorrow…" Frodo said. "Then I have been sick, and worse than ever. I have never lost a whole day before."  
  
"You just slept, mostly, Mr. Frodo. 'Tweren't so bad as all that. How do you feel now?"  
  
Frodo closed his eyes for a moment. "Tired. Very tired. And thirsty."  
  
"I have some nice tea, here, sir. Let me sit you up so you can drink it." Sam raised Frodo to a sitting position, and Frodo winced a little, as if being moved pained him.   
  
"Are you in pain, sir?"  
  
"No, Sam. Just dizzy."  
  
Sam meant to rest Frodo against the pillows, but Frodo leaned back into Sam's arms and laid his head on Sam's shoulder with a sigh. Sam let him rest there while he drank.  
  
"Sam," he said after a while. "I am not getting better."  
  
"Oh, Mr. Frodo, this weren't nothing but a little spell. You'll be your old self in the morning."  
  
"No, Sam. I am getting worse. I feel it now, and not just on these anniversaries. I am getting worse, a little, every day."  
  
"If that's true, sir, we'll have the doctor take a look at you."  
  
"What doctor in the Shire could help me? I wouldn't even know how to explain my illness."  
  
"Then we'll ask the Elves…or Gandalf. They'll understand. They'll know what to do."  
  
"Yes," Frodo said. "The Elves. But they cannot help me here. They have faded."  
  
Sam chewed his lip thoughtfully. "All right, Mr. Frodo," he said after a moment. "We'll go to Rivendell. Or Lórien…'twill be good to see the Lady again."  
  
"Lórien is empty, or soon will be. They are all passing away. The Wood will be silent."  
  
"Now, Mr. Frodo. You don't know what you're saying. Lórien, empty! If we don't go to Lórien, where shall we go? Just tell me. I'll go with you, wherever you must."  
  
But Frodo did not answer. The empty cup fell from his hands into his lap, and his head was heavy upon Sam's shoulder. He was asleep.  
  
Sam laid Frodo down gently and tucked the blankets around him, pleased to see him at rest. He held Frodo's hand and pondered what Frodo had said. It seemed to make little sense to Sam, and he thought that Frodo must have been half-asleep, or still feeling the effects of his illness when he spoke.  
  
At the window, sparkling snow flurries fell like stardust. In one of Sam's favourite tales from the long-ago days in Bilbo's study, Elbereth fashioned the stars from silver dew and set them in the heavens. Sam had always pictured a great queen, robed in white, scattering stars as a sower will scatter seeds on the rich earth, and the fall of those stars was as the fall of snow, white and brilliant and silent. _As signs in the heavens of Arda she set them_, Frodo would read, and Sam would wonder what was meant by those signs, what they might forebode. _Mr. Frodo will know_, he would think with the unfaltering faith of childhood. _For certain Mr. Frodo will know._  
  
Sam kissed Frodo's hand then laid it down on the coverlet. He rested his head against the chair and closed his eyes, wearied by the long day. He dozed, and then slept.   
  
He dreamt that he was in the study at Bag End, and he was little, so little that his legs dangled from Bilbo's tall chair. Sam looked at Bilbo's desk and saw not the usual clutter, but only a single leather satchel, bound with a black ribbon. It seemed mysterious and frightening to little Sam, and he did not want to touch it. Upon the desk, one candle burned, and dark night was at the round window. Sam turned his head and saw Frodo sitting next to him, in the flower of his youth, unbroken, untouched by evil, more fair than any Elf who had ever walked the earth. The candle cast strange shadows upon his face as he rose. _Where are you going, Mr. Frodo?_ Sam asked, in his high child's voice. _Don't you want to read about the queen, and the stars? _Frodo looked down and smiled. _I am going to look for dragons, Sam, as we have always said we would._ He walked to the door and when he opened it, the hall outside was as black as midnight. _Stay here, Mr. Frodo! This is the safe place!_ Sam cried. Frodo looked over his shoulder and laughed brightly, but his eyes were filled with tears. They glittered in the candle's flame. _Samwise, don't be silly,_ he said. _There is no safe place._ He turned and disappeared into the darkness. Little Sam ran to the door, and when he passed through it he was no longer little, and he found himself on the west bank of the Anduin, upon the green lawn that sloped down from Amon Hen. Frodo was missing, and he and Merry and Pippin had set off to find him, scattering amongst the trees. Sam could hear their clear voices calling _Frodo! Frodo!_ and Sam found the voices sad, as if they belonged to wandering spirits. Merry and Pippin's calls drifted farther and farther away, until Sam could not hear them at all. It became very dark in the forest, the trees seeming to press in on all sides, and still Sam could not find Frodo. _Oh, I have lost him!_ Sam thought, with the sluggish panic of dreams. He called for him, _Frodo! Frodo!_ but his only answer was the wind, sighing through the dark trees.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
Frodo was sleeping quietly when Sam woke. Sam tiptoed out of the room, so not to disturb him, but left the door open so that he would be able to hear if Frodo woke and called for him.   
  
Sam was in the kitchen making breakfast when he was startled by a voice behind him.   
  
"Good morning, Sam."  
  
Frodo stood in the doorway in his dressing gown. His hair was tousled and he had faint shadows beneath his eyes, but he looked surprisingly recovered.   
  
"Mr. Frodo!" Sam said happily. "I didn't expect to see you up so soon!"  
  
Frodo sat down at the table, his back to the fire. "I think I've spent enough time in bed, don't you?" he asked with a smile. "And I'm starving. What's for breakfast?"  
  
Sam made Frodo a hearty breakfast of poached eggs and ham, and was delighted to see him eat it. Frodo had nearly finished when he set his fork down and looked at Sam.  
  
"Sam, please don't tell Rose that I was sick. Don't even mention it."  
  
Sam looked at him for a long moment, unsure of what to say. "I think she'd want to know, sir. I think she'd want to know if there was anything she could do to help."  
  
"Rose has other things to think about. And so do you, Sam. I am better now, so please, don't give it any more thought."  
  
"I'm sorry, Mr. Frodo, but…well…last night, you said you thought you were getting worse. And if that's so, we need to think of a way to help you get better."  
  
Frodo looked at Sam, his eyes wide, as if startled by what Sam had said. He blinked and looked away. "I was tired last night, and sick. I didn't know what I was saying. Please, don't worry about anything I might have said. I am quite well."  
  
"Are you sure, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo looked back at Sam and favoured him with a sunny smile. "Absolutely sure!" he said. "Have you ever seen a sick hobbit eat like this?"  
  
Sam smiled back at Frodo, but their eyes met and the truth passed between them, though neither one would give it voice.  
  
Frodo spent the morning in his study, and when it was time for elevenses, Sam made up a tray of tea and biscuits and jam. Sam pushed the half-closed study door open with his shoulder.  
  
"I thought you wouldn't want to get up, so I've brought you…" Sam stopped, his eyes on Frodo at the desk. "Mr. Frodo?"  
  
Frodo was sitting at the desk, his left arm resting in his lap. With his right hand, he idly fingered the jewel around his neck. He gazed out of the window, a far-away look in his eyes. Nothing on the desk had been touched.  
  
"It is so good to be back in the Shire, Sam," Frodo said in a dreamlike voice. "It was all I ever wanted, to come home again."  
  
"Well, and now you are home, sir," Sam answered, trying to keep his voice light.  
  
"I am looking forward to spending this summer in the Shire."  
  
"If it's anything like last year, 'twill be a fine one." Frodo did not respond, nor did he turn his head. "I've brought you some elevenses, Mr. Frodo."  
  
Frodo turned then, and smiled at Sam. A shaft of pale snow-light came through the window and fell across his face. His skin was the colour of pearl, and his eyes were as heartbreakingly blue as winter sky. He smiled, but his eyes and mouth were etched with sadness, and Sam felt himself suddenly eight years old again, filled with wonder at the face before him. Only now, Sam understood whence came the great sorrow that had seemed to go by upon the wind, and he knew that it had not passed, but had found Frodo, and himself, after all. But his mind did not dwell upon these things. Sam felt only the fullness of his own heart as he looked upon his friend, and loved him.  
  
"When summer is over, Sam, I think I should like to go to Rivendell for a while," Frodo said softly. "Perhaps you will come with me, at least part of the way."  
  
"Aye, Mr. Frodo, I'll go with you. All the way, if I can."  
  
"We'll see, Sam. We have a long time to think about it."  
  
"That we do, sir. A long time," Sam answered, but in his heart he knew the time was short. Although it was only March, Sam knew that summer would pass as quickly as a shooting star, and that autumn would soon be upon them.  


	7. Bilbo's Gift

The company had been riding for seven days. They were now only a day from the Grey Havens, but dusk fell early on these September days, and they had decided to stop for the night.   
  
After supper, Sam and Frodo sat by the fire, listening to the others talk. Sam felt Frodo lean on him heavier and heavier, and when his head fell on Sam's shoulder he realized that Frodo was asleep. Sam was not surprised. He had noticed how weary Frodo became by the end of each day's ride, although their pace was not hard. Under the circumstances, Sam thought that his master would have been better off in his own warm bed at Bag End than out on the roofless downs. _What are we doing out here, anyway?_ he sometimes asked himself. _Ain't we had enough of this wandering business?  
  
_Sam roused Frodo enough to lay him down in his blankets. He felt Frodo shiver slightly.  
  
"Are you cold, Mr. Frodo?"  
  
"I'll warm up in just a bit, Sam," Frodo said drowsily.  
  
"Does your shoulder hurt at all?" He had seen Frodo favouring his left side, and had caught him wincing once or twice today, when his pony had taken a hard step.   
  
"A little. It's all right."  
  
Sam rubbed Frodo's left shoulder and arm. He didn't quite believe Frodo when he said that his shoulder pained him only "a little."  
  
"Thank you, Sam," Frodo murmured, and fell asleep.  
  
Sam massaged Frodo's arm for a while longer, then sat back and lit his pipe. In the distance, Gandalf and the Elves were gathered around the fire, where they would talk far into the night. They were never weary, it seemed. They were fine folk, to be sure, but Sam wondered how Frodo would fare amongst them. He blew smoke rings into the twilight, and thought about Frodo, and Elves.  
  
_I should have made a list, _he realized with dismay_. Because how are they supposed to know that when Mr. Frodo doesn't feel well, he needs to be in bed, and that he likes to lie on his side, but not his left side because that's the side that hurts most? How will they know that they should rub that shoulder when it pains him so that it won't stiffen up too much? Oh, I should have made a list. So that they'll know that he likes a teaspoon of honey in his tea and just a little bit of cream. And so they'll know that sometimes he likes to be let alone, but other times they need to look in on him and sit up with him. Mr. Bilbo, now, he's been away so long, that he don't know all this. So if I don't, who will tell 'em that they should keep a fire going in his room and have plenty of warm blankets on his bed, even in the summertime? Or that now and then if his shoulder hurts him too much he may need some help getting dressed, especially with the buttons because he can't manage them so well with only one hand, and that with only four fingers on it? But maybe he'll be well over there, and they won't need to know any of that or do any of those things for him. Maybe. But if it's not like that…well…_Sam sighed_. I should have made a list  
  
_Sam put his pipe aside and was making ready to go to sleep himself, when he felt a hand on his shoulder.  
  
"Samwise, a word with you?" Bilbo whispered.  
  
Sam looked up. "Of course, Mr. Bilbo."  
  
"Come with me, lad."  
  
Sam made sure that Frodo was secure in his blankets and then followed Bilbo to where his pony was tethered beneath a tree. He wondered with some anxiety what this could be about. Bilbo was often not his old self these days, and Sam sincerely hoped that Bilbo would not attempt to offer him anything odd, or, even worse, ask him about the Ring yet again.   
  
Bilbo had taken something from his saddlebag. "I wanted you to have this, my boy," he said, and handed Sam a thick leather satchel.  
  
"What is it, sir?"  
  
"My things, from Rivendell, everything that I forgot to give to Frodo last year. These are my histories of Middle-earth. My notes. Songs of the Elves. All my years of study. And you thought I had not done much writing there, Sam," Bilbo chided gently.  
  
Sam felt himself redden. "Oh, Mr. Bilbo, I couldn't…you shouldn't…"  
  
"Oh, but you can. And I should! It makes no sense to take them with me, after all, and with the Elves departing…" Bilbo glanced over to the fire, around which the Fair Folk seemed to shimmer in the dusk. "The Elves are departing, Sam. Someone must be left to tell their tales, and the other stories of Middle-earth. I meant to give these things to Frodo, but…" His eyes looked past Sam, to Frodo's sleeping form. "Well, I cannot, you see. You understand."  
  
"I do understand, Mr. Bilbo," Sam said. "But…but…shouldn't you give them to someone in Gondor? There are libraries there and scholars and…"  
  
"Sam, I don't want to give them to some librarian in Gondor. I want you to have them. I know that you will take good care of them. You have always protected the things that I love." He laid his hand on Sam's shoulder. "I would have lost the greatest of my treasures, without you, dear Master Samwise."  
  
Sam wrapped his arms around the satchel. He felt tears come to his eyes and he put his head down so Bilbo would not see.  
  
"Sam? Sam, my boy?"  
  
"But _I_ am losing him, anyway," Sam whispered through his tears. "And he has already lost everything that he tried to save."  
  
Bilbo was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Sam, you mustn't think that you are losing him. You're _letting _him go, to the peace that he has earned. And everything that he tried to save _has_ been saved."  
  
"Not for him, though, Mr. Bilbo. Maybe my mind just ain't high enough to understand it all. But it don't feel right to me, sir. It just don't feel fair." Sam looked back over his shoulder to where Frodo lay sleeping, then turned back to Bilbo. "Will you take care of him, Mr. Bilbo? Those Elves are wonderful folk, but it's not quite the same, if you follow me, sir. I know they honour him and all, but…I don't know if they love him, like we do."  
  
"Of course I'll take care of him Sam. I hope I can do as good a job as you have."  
  
"Thank you, Mr. Bilbo. It makes me feel better to know that he'll at least have a familiar face, over there. But still…Mr. Bilbo…" Sam put his head down and dropped his voice to a whisper. "I don't want him to go."   
  
"I know, Sam," said Bilbo. "I know."  
  
Bilbo pulled Sam into a quick embrace. Sam breathed in Bilbo's familiar, comfortable scent of wool and pipeweed. For just a moment, he was a child again, learning his letters in the study at Bag End. Bilbo was at his desk, Frodo was in the stuffed chair by the fireplace, his feet up on that dreadful oliphaunt-leg footstool, and sunlight was streaming in through the round window. A desperate longing came over Sam, and he knew that he would gladly give all that he had or ever would have to return to the contented peace of those days.   
  
Sam put the satchel into his own pony's saddlebag and returned to Frodo's side. He spread out his blankets and lay down behind his master.   
  
Frodo stirred and turned around halfway. "Is it morning, Sam? Is it time to go?"  
  
"No, sir. Not yet."  
  
Frodo settled back into his blankets with a sigh. "Good."  
  
Sam put his hand on Frodo's arm. "I agree, Mr. Frodo," he said softly. Sam slipped into a favourite dream, in which he and Frodo woke up to find they had overslept, and the others had gone ahead and sailed without them, and they had no choice but to return to the Shire and live happily at Bag End, for years and years.


	8. The Wisdom of Mistress Rose

_Author's Note: I never imagined when I started writing this, that I wouldn't be posting the final chapter until two days before RoTK's release. It feels like we're all coming to the end of a journey, doesn't it?   
  
Thank you to all who read this story, or any of my other work. It's been an honor to be able to share these things with all of you. And thank you to all of the wonderful writers in the LoTR fandom---you have all enriched this story, these characters and the past two years more than I can say.   
  
And of course, the greatest of thanks to J.R.R. Tolkien, for giving so much to all of us.  
  
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_  
  
  
  
When Sam returned to Bag End, he put Bilbo's gift on the desk in the study, and it remained there, unopened, for a long time.  
  
Sam did not go into the study again until a crisp morning of November, a day of fine autumn sunlight in the leafless trees and woodsmoke on the air. Bright sun streamed through the window and reflected off the gleaming surface of the old desk, once Bilbo's, then Frodo's, and now Sam's. Nothing lay on the desk now except the old leather case.  
  
The study was stuffy and unpleasant. Sam leaned over the desk and pushed the round window open. A fresh autumn breeze drifted in with the sound of birdsong and relieved some of the heaviness in the air.  
  
Sam sat down in the wooden chair and looked about himself, drumming his fingers on the surface of the desk. He felt uncomfortable and out of place, and faintly guilty, as if he had put himself into a position that he had no right to occupy. He began to whistle nervously, a little country tune. The gay notes fell dully into the room's silence, and Sam soon checked himself.   
  
With a deep breath, Sam stared at the satchel. He pulled himself up to the desk until his stomach was almost touching it, and untied the satchel's leather cords. Inside, he found papers of all sizes: large, folded sheets of parchment, delicate sheaves of onionskin, tiny scraps of paper with only a few words scribbled on them. As Sam shuffled through them, he saw many detailed maps, careful descriptions of dress and armour, bits of poems and stories and elaborate family trees. Here were all of Bilbo's most beloved interests, a vast catalogue of the peoples and cultures of Middle-earth. A sad smile touched Sam's face. He knew there had been a time when these things would have fascinated him, yet now they held little interest. Indeed, he sometimes wished that he could have lived his whole life in the Shire, and never known anything of the world outside its quiet borders.  
  
He turned over the next sheet of parchment and flinched as if he had been struck. Here was Frodo's portrait, drawn by Bilbo so long ago.  
  
Sam leaned back in the chair and exhaled softly.  
  
"My," he said in a small voice after a long moment. "But it's good to see you again, Mr. Frodo."   
  
The weight of years and the memory of many things fell upon Sam, and suddenly it seemed that so much had been lost that the world could never be set right again. He covered his eyes with a trembling hand, certain that his heart would break.  
  
A touch fell softly on his shoulder. "Sam, what is it?"  
  
He said nothing, but turned to his wife and wrapped his arms around her waist.   
  
"Ah," Rose sighed, and reached out to the parchment. Her finger traced the softly penciled outline of Frodo's youthful face. "Just look at 'im," she whispered.  
  
"I know," Sam said.  
  
"How old was he here?"  
  
"Twenty. Just twenty. 'Twas the year before he came to live at Bag End." Sam turned to look at the picture on the desk, resting his cheek against Rose. "It was the first I ever saw of him. I thought he was an Elf."  
  
They were silent for a moment. Then Rose said quietly, "He always made me both happy _and_ sad…I could hardly tell which. Like a sunset that's so pretty, but it makes your heart ache all the same. You can't even say why."  
  
"Aye" said Sam. "He was like that. He was like that, somehow."  
  
"No, Sam" she said, and tilted his chin up to look at her. "He _is_ like that."  
  
"You're right, lass," Sam said. Then, in the midst of his sorrow, Sam felt the kindling of joy, great joy, like the sun breaking over the mountains after a dark night of rain. He looked back to the portrait and placed his hand over Rose's. "He _is_."  
  
The autumn breeze blew in through the open window, over the desk and across them, husband and wife. It carried with it the scent of the harvest and the fields, the gentle air of year's end in a quiet corner of the world. Yet beneath these familiar things, Sam seemed to smell salt in the wind, and in his heart he heard the sound of the Sea as it whispered upon a distant shore.  
  
  
_The End_


End file.
